Mana Nodes
In the wild you will find some sources of raw magical power, called Mana. An arcane unit, a simple adept or an archmage does not matter, can build a Mana Node to tap and channel the power. Mana Node is a Tile Improvement, and as such may only be built inside your territory, and may be pillaged or destroyed. When you first build the Node, you will decide what Sphere of Magic the Node will serve, and since then, the Mana will be dedicated to that sphere. You will need to know the appropriate technology, of course. If the Node is destroyed, the Mana type will persist: only a Dispel Magic spell will revert the power to Raw Mana, and you will be able to tap again, choosing a different Sphere. Mana may be obtained by your Palace, by commerce, or by Mana Nodes. Even if you do have a Mana type you will have to research the appropriate Tech before it will be of use. It is rare to obtain Mana by commerce: often only a defeated civilization, reduced to be your Vassal, will consent to give you Mana, under threat of arms. On the argument, note that to leave a foe as a one city civilization, maybe also a sad city on an unfortunate spot that you have viciously donated to them some time ago, before conquering their Capital, will automatically promote the sad city to a Capital with a Palace: and you will gain the Palace Mana of your subject. Having different Mana type will allow your Units to learn different Spheres, while having more sources of a single type will give other advantages. Only one source Only one source is required of a particular Sphere to gain access to all related promotions and buildings. With a single Fire Node you will be able to build arcane barge, or to promote an Adept to Fire I, or to build the Tower of the Elements (if you have other Elemental mana available, Water, Earth and Air). No sources at all If you lose the Mana Source, strangely, you will not lose any unit, building or promotion associated. On the contrary, units that has Fire I promotion may still upgrade to Fire II and Fire III. But you will be unable to give the Fire I promotion to new units and to complete the Tower of the Elements construction, should you have started it. Note that if you somehow gain control of a unit with Nature I promotion, you will be able to use, cast relative spell and upgrade to Nature II, also if you never had any Nature Mana or you do not know the appropriate Alteration Tech. Many sources There are some advantages to have many Mana sources of the same Sphere: you will gain free promotions for your units, and in some case cumulative passive effect and affinity damage. Example. * 1 Air Node - Access to Air Sphere. * 2 Air Nodes - Acess to Sphere, and Free Air I promotion to your Units. * 3 Air Nodes - Acess to Sphere and Free Air I and Air II promotion to your Units. * 4 Air Nodes - Acess to Sphere and Free Air I, Air II, and Air III promotion to your Units. The most common use of multiple nodes are: * Death Mana, to gain Affinity Damage to you Wraith and to save promotion (if you decide to do use Death Mana, suffering the Diplomacy Malus and challenging the possibile Death Mana ban from overcouncil, you will typically give Death Promotion to everyone). * Fire Mana, to save promotion, as an army of FireMages may win the war on his own. * Sun Mana if you aim to base your conquest on the powerful Chalid Astrakein, to gain 2x Affinity: with 4 Sun Mana, Chalid will be 7 + 2 x 4 = 15 Strenght, +100% with Combat V = 22 Dispel exploit It may be advisable to build a Metamagic Node, gain Dispel Magic spell with one of your mage, and then use the Dispel Magic to revert the Node to Raw. So you will maintain at least one Dispel Mage in your empire, useful to change all your Nodes should the need arise: typically pursuing a Tower of Mastery Victory. Let say you have 4 Mana Souces in your empire: in any moment with your single Dispel Mage you may revert to Raw all of them, and then channel them toward a single Sphere at a time, in example tapping Chaos, Death, Entropy and Shadow just to build Tower of Necromancy. If you are not pursuing a Tower of Mastery Victory you may still find very attractive the single Towers for their unique advantages. Another use of the exploit is to quickly tap a certain Mana type only to give some of your Mages appropriate promotion. In some situations there are spells that may greatly enhance your power, but only a few Adepts with Level I spells are sufficient to your entire army. To buff your army Haste (Body I), Dance of Blades (Chaos I) and powerful Regeneration (Body II). If you may spare time Loyalty (Law I), Blur (Shadow I) and Courage (Spirit I). Melee units will need Enchanted Blade (Enchantment I), archer units Flaming Arrows (Enchantment II), recon units Poisoned Blade (Nature II), naval units Fair Winds (Air I). And you may find useful Mutation (Chaos II) to forge some elite units and Valor (Law III) to quicken the learning curve of your troops. For terraforming purpose remember Sanctify (Life I), Scorch (Sun I) and Spring (Water I). While we are at it, do not forget great Disciple buff spell Bless (Order) and Shield of Faith (Rune of Kilmorph): you may have it all with a bit of Religion hopping, the cleric equivalent of Dispel Magic exploit. You will never have all this mana types at the same time: you would have already win a Domination victory! Note that if an accident kill your Dispel Mage (like Stephanos popping next to him) you will be at a loss: better to have 2 or 3 of them. Category:Mana